May 25, 2011

The Chosen among the Chosen

According to this week's Torah reading, the tribe of Levi has special status among the Israelites. They aren't counted in the census; they don't fight in Israel's wars. Instead of farming and fighting, they take care of the divine service in the Tabernacle.

This puts me in an awkward position.

As a Levite, I've tasted a little of that special status over the years. During the Torah reading in the synagogue, I am frequently called up for the honor of reciting a blessing—right after the turn of the kohen, the priestly lead-off hitter. Later in the service I join the lucky few washing the hands of the kohanim before they invoke God's benediction on the worshippers. More importantly still, I've inherited a kind of internal, ancient exceptionalism, a sense that my obligations to the tradition are somehow different, more intense, more focused, than those of ordinary Jews. We Levites are the chosen among the chosen.

The down side is that the burden and confusion surrounding "chosenness" is doubly felt by us. Indeed, chosenness in general has taken a beating lately. Overt exceptionalism, religious or national, is unseemly in a democratic age, especially for Jews who have so often been on the receiving end of other, more violent elitisms. Too often, chosenness is taken as arrogance, a claim to know God's will better than others, a claim to superiority.

Such a perception triggers two related responses, both of which play a part in anti-Semitism. One of them is a wildly disproportionate focus on Jewish failings, for which the ancient claim to chosenness serves as an excuse. The other is outright hatred, spurred as often as not by resentment of the assumption of moral superiority that is wrongly taken to be integral to the same ancient claim.

It's a nasty business, this chosenness. So why not just give up on it? Because to give up on chosenness is to give up on the core of Jewish identity.

Every form of excellence requires some inner instinct of chosenness. Every path-breaking entrepreneur, artist, athlete, or investor has to be willing to buck trends, to be a contrarian, to place his own judgment above that of others, arrogating to himself the right to judge others in the very act of demanding a superior performance of himself. Call it arrogance, but every field of life advances on the strength of individuals who see themselves on some level as chosen.

Chosenness doesn't mean Jews are in fact better, but rather that they have been called upon to set their sights on nothing less than excellence—and, in particular, moral excellence. From an objective standpoint, Jewish chosenness is not such a big deal: it is neither more nor less than belief in a certain unique moral standard encapsulated in the revelation at Sinai, a standard to which Jews are held by God and which, as God ceaselessly reminds them, they just as ceaselessly fail to attain.

Historically, this conception of chosenness is the essence of Jewish identity. Collectively the Jews went through something thousands of years ago that was unique in human history. That something enjoins them to do better and, it is hoped, bring others along with them. No matter how much suffering it has brought them at the hands of others, they can never let go of that something without letting go of themselves.

France and America, with their big swaths of land and advanced militaries, can forswear their own powerful claims to chosenness and still limp along for a while. But without anything like those advantages of size and power, and in a world where assimilation can happen in a blink, Jews have no such luxury. To paraphrase an Israeli saying in a different context: the first war against chosenness that we lose will be our last.

As for us Levites, without a Temple to attend to we're left with little more than the honor of washing other people's hands in synagogue. But that is enough to remind us that, no matter how difficult its obligations, and how easily and harmfully it is misunderstood, chosenness must never be abandoned.